This weekend's Tea Party rally in Madison, Wis., drew familiar figures like Sarah Palin and Andrew Breitbart, but perhaps the most interesting speaker was a 14-year-old girl named Tricia Willoughby. Tricia wowed, among others, Rachael Larimore, who writes for Slate.com's ladies blog, XX Factor.

ENLARGE

Tricia Willoughby: She's alive!
YouTube

"What's impressive is her strong voice, her confidence, and, let's face it, her youth," Larimore writes. "The Tea Party is often seen as being made up entirely of cranky middle-aged people who don't like paying taxes. But here is a smart, engaging young woman speaking with the poise of someone older."

Showing considerably less poise is the bitter, pudgy middle-aged man featured in a YouTube video of the left-wing counterprotest. "Go home, you little brat!" he shouts at the 14-year-old, struggling to make himself heard over his comrades' boos and noisemakers. "Who the f--- are you to lecture me, you little brat?!"

Apparently the Pudgester is taking a cue from former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, whose New York Times blog post the morning of the rally was titled "Civility Is the Last Refuge of Scoundrels." Yesterday he followed up with a column titled "Let's Not Be Civil." Wait, weren't Krugman and the newspaper that employs him issuing demands for civility just a few months ago? Nah, we have always been at war with Eastasia.

Something else caught our attention about Tricia Willoughby. Larimore points out that "a quick Google search"--which turns up a post by blogger Stacy McCain--"reveals that her parents are pro-life activists in Madison and that Tricia is in a debate club. Cynics will point out that--gasp!--she is homeschooled, as if that ought to discredit her."

Larimore concludes: "There is much debate over what long-lasting impact the Tea Party will have, if any. If there are many more like Tricia Willoughby, I wouldn't underestimate it."

There probably are many more like Tricia Willoughby, aren't there? After all, her parents are "pro-life activists," which means they have a tendency to follow the biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply. People on the other political side are more inclined toward subtraction (or as they call it, "choice"), as we explained in our 2005 paper "The Roe Effect."

Here are some Badger State numbers: Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationwide in 1973. The Wisconsin Department of Health has statewide figures on the annual number of abortions going back to 1975. Tot up the numbers through 1992, and you come up with 316,457.

Scott Walker won the governorship last year by a margin of 124,638. That may not be within the margin of abortion; after all, some of the missing 316,457 would have voted Republican had they existed, and many would not have voted.

But JoAnne Kloppenburg, the left-liberal state Supreme Court candidate who was supposed to save Wisconsin's labor monopolies from Walker's reforms, lost by just 7,316 votes, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (this figure is pending a possible futile recount). It's almost inconceivable that the Roe effect alone is insufficient to account for Justice David Prosser's victory.

Oh, and in four years, Tricia Willoughby will be old enough to vote, while an additional 54,522 will not be.

A case of mistaken identity has entangled a small family-owned Des Moines company in union protests and led to a death threat.

Angry callers are mistaking Koch Brothers, a Des Moines office supply firm, with the brothers who own Koch Industries, the global energy conglomerate. Billionaires Charles and David Koch have fought Wisconsin unions, financed the tea party and opposed climate change rules.

Dutch Koch, president of the Des Moines company, wants everyone to know he's not one of those Koch brothers, and he's not politically active.

"I initially thought it was humorous to be confused with a multibillionaire," he said, but then a death threat was left on his answering machine. Koch reported the call to the FBI, which he said traced it to a California man.

Death threats are just a way of life for these union thugs, aren't they? We blame Paul Krugman.

We're From the Government, and We're Here to Help Friday's email from reader Gordon Calkins, who discussed his frustration with the government bureaucracy he has to endure in exchange for a little taxpayer money to help care for his autistic son, brought more stories from readers with similar experiences. Here is Nikki Stuart:

The SSI and disability come up to about $620 a month. Medicare and Medicaid are a good thing, since she has no other income and is uninsurable anyway.

We homeschooled her K-12 (along with her four siblings), which I figure saved the state somewhere around $900,000, so the government is way ahead in terms of outlay.

Anyway, I agree with the writer with the autistic son. Our daughter would be much better off if the government would get its (left) foot off our necks, leave us alone, and free us up to make and keep some money to take care of her ourselves. The litany of the complexities of starting a small business and scratching up a couple bucks is surely too well-known to you to require a recitation here.

And this is from Bob Ellison:

I have a son with Down syndrome. He receives amazingly generous support via Medicaid from Pennsylvania: physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech training. All four of my sons are covered by my own health insurance, and I have to pay occasional copayment fees and other things for all but one: the one with Down syndrome. My insurance plan never pays a dime on him; Pennsylvania pays.

Twice I have investigated hiring therapists on my own nickel for my son: once for continuity, because he had an excellent therapist, and it takes time to to develop a useful relationship between therapist and subject; and once for extra support, because we wanted more help than Medicaid, generous though it was, could provide. I am wealthy and ready to pay for these things, but that does not help, because my son's therapists work for companies that contract exclusively with the state, and I cannot find alternatives, because the laws and regulations that govern such services make those industries beholden to government-paid systems. The government has created a monopoly; there are almost no workers outside the system.

In a nutshell, then:

1. I am wealthy, but I receive welfare.

2. My one son gets free health care from the state; I have to pay for the other three sons.

3. The government has frozen out other options.

Everything about this is wrong: I do not need and should not receive welfare, but I have no choice but to take it, because the workers cannot take my own money. My son with Down syndrome should not be treated as more worthy than my other three sons. And businesses should be free to provide goods and services as they see fit.

President Obama's answer, assuming the Ellisons fit his definition of "millionaires and billionaires" (i.e., household income above $250,000 a year), is to tax them far more heavily so that the government can afford to keep butting into their lives.

Appeal to Authority "Crazed cult leader Charles Manson has broken a 20-year silence in a prison interview coinciding with the 40th anniversary of his conviction for the gruesome Sharon Tate murders--to speak out about global warming," reports London's Daily Mail:

The infamous killer, who started championing environmental causes from behind bars, bemoaned the 'bad things' being done to environment in a rambling phone interview from his Californian jail cell.

'Everyone's God and if we don't wake up to that there's going to be no weather because our polar caps are melting because we're doing bad things to the atmosphere.

'If we don't change that as rapidly as I'm speaking to you now, if we don't put the green back on the planet and put the trees back that we've butchered, if we don't go to war against the problem . . .' he added, trailing off.

The tabloid's headline is hilarious: "Global Warming Must Be True, Charles Manson Believes in It." To be sure, even the inverse may be false, which is to say that global warming could be true even though Manson, who describes himself as "a bad man who shoots people," believes in it. But almost every global-warmist argument is of the same form as the headline: Global warming must be true because such-and-such a scientist or other authority figure (or Al Gore) believes in it.

The Scranton police union has filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the city for an off-duty drug arrest made by Police Chief Dan Duffy in March. . . .

The complaint states that "the work of apprehending and arresting individuals has been the sole and exclusive province of members of the bargaining unit," and that the city did not inform or negotiate with the union that the chief would be "performing bargaining unit work." . . .

The union president said the chief, as member of management, should not actively root out crime or randomly patrol neighborhoods while off duty because it violates union agreements that protect rank-and-file officers' employment. The union is concerned city administrators will have more leverage to lay off police officers because "Chief Duffy will step in" and do the work, Sgt. [Bob] Martin said.

This gives us an idea: Maybe if criminals were forced to join unions, they'd become as inefficient at breaking the law as cops are at enforcing it.

Other Than That, the Story Was Accurate "This article was amended on 19 April 2011. The original referred to the Senator Jesse Helms as Jesse James. This has been corrected."--correction, Guardian (London)

Metaphor Alert "All this as the thinned ranks of Democrats find themselves outmaneuvered in statehouses where they once put up a fight. In many states, they are unable to do much except hope that voters will see these actions as an overreach by the Republicans they elected--an accidental revolution to be reversed down the road. A tug to the right was in the cards ever since voters put the GOP in charge of 25 legislatures and 29 governors' offices in the 2010 elections. That is turning out to be every bit as key to shaping the nation's ideological direction as anything happening in Washington."--Associated Press, April 18

"White House Website Skews Deficit Numbers Ahead of National Tour"--headline, DailyCaller.com, April 18

Save Dunder Mifflin! If you thought Jesse Jackson was a dinosaur, wait till you get a load of his son. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., an Illinois Democrat, gave a speech on the House floor Friday in which he blamed the iPad for unemployment, the Chicago Tribune reports:

The Democratic congressman went on to cite the iPads given to students at universities such as Chicago State, in Jackson's district, and questioned what the decline in the use of textbooks would do to other industries.

"What becomes of publishing companies and publishing company jobs? What becomes of bookstores and librarians and all of the jobs associated with paper?"

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